Pushing Daisies
 

I think I found my favorite new show of the season, and it's only a quarter of the way through the first episode. Anyone checking out this new show on ABC? I especially love the style it's presented in.

Pushing Daisies (spoilers)
 

So I saw the description for this and was expecting "procedural cop drama with a wacky twist," but instead I got a Tim Burton-esque fantasia of weirdness and bittersweet charm and bittersweet charm laid on so thick that it twists into entirely novel forms of weirdness all by itself.

And pies.

So did anyone else happen to catch this totally inexplicable show?

I think Fencer might have.

Yeah, way to not even notice what threads have been posted last night, Fifth. You bastard. Stealing my thunder. You suck. Put yourself on probation, thunder stealer. Blah! Okay, I'm done.

But otherwise, it's got that Edward Scissorhands/Willy Wonka whimsicalness and colorful vividness, plus the dark yet not dark style... Plus, the actors are all good, and the show's sense of humor is spot on. It's, as I already said, my favorite new show of the season (Heroes is still my favorite overall, probably).

It's hypothetically possible that I started this thread because Fencer's wasn't spoiler-titled and I felt deeply that Pushing Daisies fans needed to be able to discuss this program free of the burden of writing out spoiler tags. And if you think about it, hypothetically possible is really pretty much the exact same thing as being actually true!

Would it be audacious of me to put forth the idea that maybe all threads about ongoing shows in this particular forum be presumed spoiler-filled? I don't think I've read a post in any of the recent topics where somebody came in three pages late and still hadn't caught the most recent episode. All the black space and spoiler boxes could then be reserved for actual still-in-the-pipelines spoilers, as opposed to this-just-happened spoilers. I dunno, just a thought.

Anyways on to this show, which frankly is tearing me apart. On the one hand, I adore Dead Like Me, and taking the soul of that show and supplanting it into a Big Fish wonderland creates literal wellsprings of joy inside...

But then the realist in me struggles forth, and I realize that while this is probably the best pilot of the season, I don't think the surrounding series can manage to keep the steam pumping. I love Fuller like a creative deity, but I can't help but feeling that he's written a great start to a middling story. Aside from the proceduralness I know is forthcoming, the heart of the show (Chuck and Ned) is of the "Problem that can never be solved unless the show is ending" variety; Whatever progress the two make will inevitably be shunted back to square one.

And yet...the show is just fun to watch. None of the characters dipped below charming, and the main leads are perfectly cast (although Chuck looks like some fraternal twin of Zooey Deschanel at points). The narration is perfect, the production design is great, and the quirkiness is at that just-below-diabetes-inducing level that makes it supremely endearing.

So I guess I'm left with cautious optimism. Bryan Fuller has pretty much earned a nigh-infinite supply of free passes just from Dead Like Me, and I really want this show to be everything the pilot promised.

... You can edit thread titles though. You just wanted the glory for yourself. So, I shake my fist at you. Yeah, but the optimist in me is saying that he'll constantly defy the proceduralness of the procedural. This might just be the shot in the arm the crime drama needs. The pilot exceeded all my expectations, and I have faith that he'll be able to exceed it further, if he manages to get a season in before it gets canned, which is what I fear most.

Yeah, the writer doesn't seem terribly interested in crime drama itself, so much as crime drama as a springboard into a vast ocean of delightful weirdness. I mean in that the whole hook is that the guy solves crimes by walking into the morgue and asking the dead guy who murdered him, it's hard to see where they'd be able to make that an overriding concern of the show.

The whole thing plays like the writer - Fuller? - just wanted to write a show about a guy who can touch dead things and make them come back to life and then go back to being dead, and just figured that solving an occasional crime would be one activity in which such a person would logically be engaged.

It is probably worth making a distinction between aired events and in-the-pipeline stuff, though as far as blanket open-spoilering for the former, I really don't know. I'm actually probably not the person to ask about this; I should probably refer this to Meister as he tends to be more circumspect about spoilering issues than I am.

It's also worth noting that it's not even necessary in all instances, I mean looking at this thread nothing spoiler-ey has even been discussed. Although really I guess with something like Pushing Daisies spoilers are almost incidental one way or the other, as you're not watching so much for this or that particular plot reveal so much as to be immersed in the overall sea of weirdness.

What, and abuse my position as a moderator for my own benefit? Why I would never!

Ha ha okay but no seriously threads merged. Heck I even left it as spoilers-covered.

Old Post: My major fear is that the sheer amount of whimsy distilled into this show will drive off a chunk of the audience. However, it did manage to pull an 8.3 in the ratings last night (highest rated in it's timeslot), and it is in a rather strong spot, with nothing really of note compeating against it (Deal or No Deal, Kid Nation, Fox's lamentable sitcoms). If it can keep those numbers up, that will be just peachy.

New episode discussiony one: Man, I love this show even more now. There's so many little touches that make it great, like the flaming box of laxitives after the car explodes. And did I mention I love the narration? I love the narration.

But, I think they showed just how inventive and creative the storytelling can be here, because, if this is a procedural, it's the least procedural procedural of all time.

Just caught this show tonight, or at least part of an episode, and I think I'll be checking it out in the future. What got my attention initially, was the fact that the narrator (Jim Dale) is the same guy who reads for the Harry Potter audiobooks.

And while it wouldn't work on this show, I almost wish he'd do the narration in his Hagrid voice for one episode. Or maybe Dobby.

SWB